Just found out I sold my short story “Oranges, Lemons, and Thou Beside Me” to the new .PDF science fiction ‘zine Transfinite. Rah! And they’re going to pay me in pounds . . . sigh. Ah well, the exchange rate is still pretty rocking. The editor said it’s slated for issue #9.
This is the absolute coolest news I have heard in a long time! From: SFWA News, posted by Glenn Lewis Gillette:
Source: University of Iowa
Released: Fri 11-Feb-2005, 12:20 ET
Libraries: Life News (Arts and Humanities)
Keywords: SCIENCE FICTION, COLLECTIONS, LIBRARY, ZINES
Contact Information: Tom Snee
Thanks to an eBay-shopping English professor, the University of Iowa has acquired more than 250,000 science fiction fanzines and almost overnight has increased its stature as a prominent science fiction research center.
The crud is slowly clearing from the house. Hobkin has renewed his interest in broccoli and cottage cheese, and we are no longer going through Kleenex at a phenomenal rate. But there’s still a lingering “I feel crappy” element. Ugh.
In “yay” news, E. Sedia reviewed The 3rd Alternative #40 for Tangent and had this to say about “Running on Two Legs”:
“Eugie Foster’s ‘Running on Two Legs’ is a positive tale, and the beauty of the language carries one along with the story . . . the protagonist is deeply sympathetic and believable . . . It is difficult to write a thoughtful story that features a terminal disease without melodrama, and Eugie Foster achieves it with style.”
Coolness.
And I got a note from the artist, Kirk Alberts, who’s going to be doing the cover art for my Scrybe Press chapbook, “Inspirations End/Still My Beating Heart.” He’s actually soliciting feedback! I get to have a say in how the artwork turns out. Wow.
I haven’t been totally lump-like, even though it feels like I’ve been galloping along at top speed, just to stay in the same place.
– I completed the blurbage for C. Dennis Moore’s Icons to Ashes.
– Signed and sent back the contract for “Year of the Fox.”
– On the Tangent front, I emailed a slew of editors to notify them of the address change for review copies. Several of them are going to start sending me electronic review copies, which makes me happy. It’s so much faster and cheaper to email PDFs or RTF story files to my reviewers. Plus, the overseas thing stops being an issue then. Tangent has reviewers in Canada, France, the UK, and now Australia, as well as the ones scattered across the U.S., so postage costs could quickly become scary. Also took on our first advertiser. Shiny front page banner goodness which, more importantly, is bringing in revenue.
If you can read this, I either know you in person, or I trust you despite the fact we’ve never exchanged face mail. I may open this to more people later, but right now, I’m feeling the need for a modicum of discretion.
[Edit: 4/9/2006 – it’s been over a year, so I’m opening this post to just a flist lock.]
For those of you who didn’t know, I telecommute out of Atlanta for my day job, and have since 2001–a generous arrangement by my company of employment. However, it’s also a tenuous one. I fill out a yearly “remote worker” application which may be refused, necessitating that I either return back to where my company’s home office is (in the Midwest), or terminate from the company.
I just had my 2005 remote worker application refused. I’m not moving, so I’ll be unemployed starting March.
I’ve known this was a possibility for the last year, as my company has been re-evaluating it’s remote worker policy since the .com crash. Matthew and I have been saving, and I’ve been braced for this; I’m not freaked out or depressed by the news. But I have been with this company for nearly eleven years. There’s definitely anxiety at the prospect of losing my decade-plus meal ticket. My supervisor is talking to other folks in the company to see about finding me a local position after March. If something comes up, I’ll take it, but I’m not excited at the prospect.
What I’d really like to do is take this opportunity to switch career paths. I’ve worked in IT for a decade, and I’ve never found it to be a particularly rewarding occupation. If I can, I’d like to try to switch to writing and publishing, since, as anyone who knows me or reads my blog knows, that’s where my passion really lies.
It doesn’t help that I’m terribly unhealthy and need medical benefits, though.
The future is less secure than it was. But I’m okay.
Thank Gahd! Our webmaster found online Tangent archives at The Wayback Machine. We’re in the process of trying to download them all, but it looks like they exist up through December 2003. Whew.
I spent many hours yesterday restoring the most recent ones. I’m hoping there will be a faster way, but for now, I’m cutting and pasting each one individually. Really, really hoping there’ll be a faster way. There’s a lot of old reviews.
Hobkin has a stuffy nose. He can only smell the sharpest tasting/scented food, so he’ll eat bell peppers and biscuits, but won’t touch tomatoes and cucumbers. Poor lil guy.
Here’s a picture of his nosie, because it’s just that cute:
I live. Still dealing with the crud filling my sinuses and lungs, but I’m better. *hack cough sneeze* Although “better” is relative.
Watched Under the Tuscan Sun yesterday a la Netflix. Both Matthew and I liked it. It was sweet without being saccharine and had a dreamy, magical feel.
Have been very sedentary due to the creeping phlegm infiltrating my soul. But between naps I did manage to do a lot of work on Tangent, restoring archival reviews from 2004 for F&SF, RoF, Analog, Asimov’s, Paradox, and ASIM. Still have a ways to go but we’re getting there. Unfortunately, our old hosting server deleted our database which means we’ve lost a slew of data: archived reviews, membership information, etc. I think we can get 2004 reviews restored, but after that our archives are going to be pretty patchy. I contacted the previous webmaster in hopes that he’d have backups. He had a few reviews, but not many. Going to start emailing reviewers next to see if they kept copies. Argh.
Didn’t even going to try to go in to work today. What’s worse, Hobkin has been making snuffling/wheezing noises, and has been rubbing his nose with his paws. I’ve given him my cold! Now I’m wracked by guilt as well as sick as a dog.
Crappity crappity crud.
Finished and published my Tangent review of this week’s Sci-Fiction story. Not sure what the deal is with the rest of the e-Market reviews. The editor for that side of Tangent has been largely MIA. . .
How can a single body produce so much phlegm? Ugh. Went into work today because it seemed the thing to do. Tried to avoid my co-workers so as not to be a Typhoid Mary. I figure it’s better to be anti-social than a plague-bearer. As it turns out, there was nothing so pressing that it could not have waited for another day, and I spent the morning waffling between calling it quits and sticking it out. I called it quits and spent the afternoon in a coma on the couch.
But, on an up note, I received my new ergo keyboard at work, so I no longer have to type on the painful flat one.
12-day form reject from Chronicle books. Zounds that was fast. I guess they really didn’t like my query.
25-day sort-of-reject from Flashing Swords on the rewrite they requested. A “sort-of” because the editor really liked the protag and his universe and is very interested in seeing other stories using the same protag and universe, and if he publishes them, he’d buy this one that he rejected. Except, um, I haven’t written any other stories with this particular character/universe. Now I’m pondering whether I ought to revisit this character. Hmm.
Words: 0. Too much mucus in my head to write. Blah.
Thanks to everyone for their well-wishes and/or alien mucus-harvesting commiseration.
In less “yay” news:
4-day “it was well received but . . . ” from Lenox Ave.
105-day “not for us” from Feral Fiction.
But y’know, the sting of rejection is pretty toothless after a series of juicy sales.
Still oozing mucus. Returning to bed.
The amount of mucus generated by my sinuses suggests to me that an alien has taken up residence in my lungs and is cultivating it so he may harvest it as fuel in some bizarre, mucus-consuming faster-than-light space vehicle.
Or, I’m sick.
Going back to bed.
